When I campaigned, I'd let them throw a punch, but by gosh, I'd throw two back. I always said, the first rule in politics is never defend, always attack. I still believe that.

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country, and it's got to be addressed. We've got to stop it. It's eroding our politics. It's separating our society into the haves and the have-nots. It's condemning a whole younger set of our population to not be able to enter the middle class. And, it hits hardest in the prairie areas of the United States, our small towns and communities, where the jobs just aren't available and the incomes are low.

I don't know if there's any secret recipe. Just a lot of hard work. Pay attention to your constituents. I always had a great Iowa staff that did all my great constituent service work. And I found that people would forgive me for a lot of my "liberal sins" because I paid attention to the home front.

Let's face it, in America today we don't have a health care system, we have a sick care system.

When I campaigned, I'd let them throw a punch, but by gosh, I'd throw two back. I always said, the first rule in politics is never defend, always attack. I still believe that.

When those pictures of Abu Ghraib came out, I thought, my gosh, this is like the tiger cages for prisoners in Vietnam all over again. Only we were actually doing it ourselves, we weren't hiring another government to do it.

Stem cell research holds enormous promise for easing human suffering, and federal support is critical to its success.